PFF tribe doesn’t believe.
You know, Joe might have to start calling Bucs icon Lavonte David “Mr. Underrated.”
David is so underrated that guys like J.J. Watt and Luke Kuechly take to social media and sports hollering shows to talk about how underrated he is. And during the very few times David goes on a national show, the core subject discussed is that he is underrated.
And still the guy cannot sniff a Pro Bowl. It’s just insane.
(Yeah, Joe knows someone will say, “Who cares about the Pro Bowl?” Well, agents and players sure do. They have bonuses in their contracts tied to getting the honor.
So the PFF tribe decided to choose the most underrated player for each team and David wasn’t the choice.
Instead, Jonathon Macri has YaYa Diaby as his most underrated.
Diaby didn’t explode in the sack column in 2024, which kept his play under the radar, but his underlying pass-rush metrics suggest he had a breakout season in 2024.
Perhaps most impressive about Diaby’s past season is that he delivered an 18.1% pass-rush win rate, which was a top-10 mark for the position, as were his 70 total pressures. Sacks are often what makes headlines, but Diaby is well on pace to regress positively in that regard, which will likely keep him from remaining underrated.
Sacks make headlines because sacks change games. Pressures rarely mean s(p)it. Pressures are the football equivalent of horseshoes and hand grenades. Close doesn’t count.
And while Joe likes YaYa and still thinks YaYa will be a good player, it’s about results, not “metrics.” YaYa’s sack total went down last year. For most of the season, he came up empty, though he had a late-season flurry late that was very encouraging.
David puts up Hall of Fame numbers. Has his entire career. And the guy can’t pay his way into the Pro Bowl. That’s really not underrated, it’s criminal, like Watt said.
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J.J. Watt: “Lavonte David Criminally Underrated”